Photography after Photography

Nancy Burson, Big Brother (1983), 8x16 inches, black and white composite photograph.

The photo on the this month's Institute of Contemporary Art brochure is startling: a beautiful woman in panties, bra and spike heels leans over a couch with her back to the camera. But she's staring at the camera as well — her head is on backwards.

Jiggling one's sense of reality is just the point with this photograph, which is part of the ICA's fall exhibit, Photography after Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, opening Sept. 6. Thirty artists are represented in the show, which originated in Germany. Philadelphia is the only American venue.

Also notable is Nancy Burson's Big Brother, a composite of five dictators — Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Hitler and Khomeini.

The exhibition raises two central questions: With today's technology, is photography really a documentary medium? And is digitally-produced photography really photography at all?

In conjunction with the exhibit, the ICA will host lectures and workshops, including a two-session symposium titled "Manipulated Realities: Imagery in the Digital Age," which will address photography's validity as a documentary medium (Sept. 13); the show's German curator, Hubertus von Amelunxen, will lead a panel discussion on Sept. 18; UArts media arts professor Jeannie Pearce will conduct a workshop on digitally altering photographs with Photoshop (Sept. 25); James Primosch of Penn's music department will demonstrate sequencing and sound-editing software on Oct. 9.

Sept. 6-Oct. 26. Opening reception Fri., Sept. 5, 5:30-7:30 p.m. ICA, 118 S. 36th St., 898-7108.

— Jennifer Darr